xxiii, 798 p. ; 24 cm

"From Occitan poetry to Francophone writing produced in the Caribbean and North Africa, from intellectual history to current films, and from medieval manuscripts to bandes dessine;es, this History covers French literature from its beginnings to the present day. With equal attention to all genres, historical periods and registers, this is the most comprehensive guide to literature written in French ever produced in English, and the first in decades to offer such an array of topics and perspectives. Contributors attend to issues of orality, history, peripheries, visual culture, alterity, sexuality, religion, politics, autobiography and testimony. The result is a collection that, despite the wide variety of topics and perspectives, presents a unified view of the richness of French-speaking cultures. This History gives support to the idea that French writing will continue to prosper in the twenty-first century as it adapts, adds to, and refocuses the rich legacy of its past"--

Includes bibliographical references (p. 710-755) and index

Machine generated contents note: Introduction; 1. Manuscripts and manuscript culture; 2. The troubadours: the Occitan model; 3. The Chansons de geste; 4. Saints' lives, violence and community; 5. Myth and the matière de Bretagne; 6. Sexuality, shame and the genesis of romance; 7. Medieval lyric: the trouvères; 8. The grail; 9. Women authors of the Middle Ages; 10. Crusades and identity; 11. Rhetoric and historiography: Villehardouin's 'La Conquête de Constantinople'; 12. Humour and the obscene; 13. Travel and orientalism; 14. Allegory and interpretation; 15. History and fiction: the narrativity and historiography of the Matter of Troy; 16. Mysticism; 17. Prose romance; 18. Rhetoric and theatre; 19. The rise of metafiction in the late Middle Ages; 20. What does Renaissance mean?; 21. Sixteenth-century religious writing; 22. Sixteenth-century poetry; 23. Sixteenth-century theatre; 24. Women writers in the sixteenth century; 25. Sixteenth-century prose narrative; 26. Sixteenth-century thought; 27. Sixteenth-century travel writing; 28. Sixteenth-century margins; 29. Tragedy: early- to mid-seventeenth century; 30. Tragedy: mid- to late-seventeenth century; 31. Seventeenth-century comedy; 32. Seventeenth-century poetry; 33. Seventeenth-century philosophy; 34. Seventeenth-century women writers; 35. Moraliste writing in the seventeenth century; 36. Seventeenth-century prose narrative; 37. Seventeenth-century religious writing; 38. Seventeenth-century margins; 39. What is Enlightenment?; 40. The eighteenth-century novel; 41. The eighteenth-century conte; 42. Eighteenth-century comic theatre; 43. Eighteenth-century theatrical tragedy; 44. Eighteenth-century women writers; 45. Eighteenth-century philosophy; 46. Libertinage; 47. Eighteenth-century travel; 48. Eighteenth-century margins; 49. The Roman personnel; 50. Romanticism: arts, literature and history; 51. Realism; 52. French poetry 1793-1863; 53. Symbolism; 54. Madness and writing; 55. Literature and the city in the nineteenth century; 56. Nineteenth-century travel writing; 57. Philosophy and ideology in nineteenth-century France; 58. Naturalism; 59. Impressionism: art, literature and history (1870-1914); 60. Decadence; 61. Avant-garde: text and image; 62. Autobiography; 63. The modern French novel; 64. The contemporary French novel; 65. Existentialism; 66. Modern French thought; 67. French drama in the twentieth century; 68. Twentieth-century poetry; 69. Francophone writing; 70. Writing and postcolonial theory; 71. Travel writing 1914-2010; 72. French cinema 1895-2010; 73. Writing, memory and history; 74. Holocaust writing and film; 75. Women writers, artists and filmmakers; 76. Popular culture and the case of the bande dessine;e; 77. Literature, film and new media; Bibliography; Index

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